Taper Time

It is that time again, Taper Time.

Those playing at home might know that I have a big race in a couple of weeks which I have been training very hard for over the last 4 months or so. That race is the Standup Paddle National Championships and it is very firmly my A race for the season.

Coming up to that race though I have another event, not quite a B race, but not quite as important as the National Champs. Perhaps an A and a half race, if there is such a thing. This race is the State Marathon Championships and it is on this Sunday. Given it is a state champs and also given that I am pretty fit at the moment I would like to give that a good go and do as well as I can at the race. All this means I am on a bit of a taper at the moment to make sure I hit race day sufficiently fresh and ready to go.

However, I also want to make sure I am maintaining training momentum on the way to the National, after all, Nationals is my primary focus. Therefore, I don't want to go full taper and give up too much fitness etc in pursuit of a perfect State Champs. As a result I am currently treading a fine line between tapering and maintaining fitness. It is a bit of a tight rope.

Using the predictive abilities of TrainingPeaks I think I have nailed the taper plan pretty well. In general it looks like a normal taper, ie maintain intensity, reduce volume, however, the difference is I haven't removed as much volume as I normally would. The slightly higher volume means that fitness is being maintained, but I won't be quite as fresh on Sunday as I would usually aim to be on race day. It is a good example of how powerful and useful software like TrainingPeaks can be, really letting you customise a taper to make it very specific.

The trade off of this taper approach is that it is a bit of a gamble, I may go into the race on Sunday just a bit too cooked and as a result, not race as well as I could. However, so far things are looking okay. Fingers crossed the science works out.